When it comes to anticipating upcoming MMOs (and yes, there ARE upcoming MMOs), I have two lists. The first one is a list of potential interests, games that I’m nominally intrigued about but am reserving a lot of judgment until they’re much closer to launch and start to prove themselves. Games such as Chronicles of Elyria, any of the City of Heroes knock-offs, Crowfall, Star Citizen, and World Adrift. They may be good, they may not be, they may be right up my alley, and they may be fine games that just don’t turn out to be my thing. It’s a really uncertain category.

The second list is much shorter and concerns titles that I am much more confident about and interested in. Project Gorgon heads up this list, obviously, and after that is Sea of Thieves and maybe Peria Online and Master X Master. I’m waffling on two more titles, New World and Ashes of Creation, that probably logically belong in the first category but I’m far more excited about them than most early development titles.

In Ashes of Creation’s case, this out-of-nowhere MMO is definitely hitting a lot of the sweet spots to stir up my appetite. We’re getting lots of solid dev diaries and plenty of great videos that show a game that looks much further along than I would expect. To be sure, it’s probably a heavily doctored, very limited demo in scope, but… look at that thing! I love how it begins with a walk through a town and shows some other NPCs in action. The spell effects are bedazzling, and the UI, for as early as it is, has a nice, clean design to it.

Ashes is most definitely on my watch list, and I think the team is doing a great job priming interest for the inevitable Kickstarter. This just might be the second game I’ll ever crowdfund, unless I can get my fanboy hype under control. Maybe I’ve been too starved for strong upcoming MMORPGs that I’ll just leap to the first one I see, but dang, this game looks fantastic so far. More please!

6 thoughts on “Drooling over Ashes of Creation”

I need to know more before I start forming any strong opinions, but it is creeping onto my radar. Since it seems more sandboxy, I need to know what its stance on PvP is. I’m not into gankboxes.

The video is intriguing. The woman’s arms are terrifying, but it is pre-alpha, so hopefully the character models will be improved. It’s hard to draw any firm conclusions about the combat from so little, but it looks like kind of a hybrid of tab target and action combat mechanics, similar to GW2 and TSW? I could get behind that.

I do like the environmental manipulation on display, like blasting the boulders out of the way. I’m always frustrated by how static MMO environments are, so if they can offer something that breaks that mould, I’m definitely intrigued.

Ashes of Creation is firmly on my radar too. They aren’t making it easy though. I just tried to register an account at their website and it failed at the confirmation email stage. I’m waiting to see if they get back to me to fix that.

The videos make the whole thing look a lot further along than I was expecting. I’m not sure how Tyler sees combat mechanics similar to GW2/TSW in that video although I really hope he’s right. It looks more like a center-targeted mouse-masher to me but really it’s impossible to be sure. The FAQ has literally nothing to say about combat mechanics at this stage.

It does, however, talk about systems that will heavily deter ganking, which means it will be a gank box unless they have actual PvE servers. No form of deterrent has ever been devised that will prevent gankers from ganking. So long as it also has safe zones, though, I can live with that. I don’t need to go where the dangerous people go!

Hehe – sorry to mess up your comments section, Syp. Feel free to edit these into one or delete them. I just thought I ought to come back to say that I made a second account and registered that and it went through okay.

Pre-alphas will be pre-alphas…

WarsydeFebruary 28, 2017 / 2:45 pm

I hadn’t even heard of this one before. Nice to know that there might be something to look forward to, though I’m not sure yet. It seems like all the recent MMOs or just-over-the-horizon MMOs are either PvP gankfests or asian imports. Or both. PvP gankfests are a major turn off for me, and the asian imports keep ending up being all flash and no substance. Hopefully this turns out to be something good. The most recent MMO I still come back to on occasion is Guild Wars 2 . . . and that’s nearly 5 years old now.

I’m looking forward to all the City of Heroes clones, and hopeful that at least one of them will get the alchemy right and create gaming gold, but otherwise? Meh. I’ve been playing MMOs since 1999 and Everquest, and used to get into beta tests for everything. Now I can barely even pay attention. Publishers don’t seem interested in investing in big-budget MMOs any more and so much of what comes out is shovelware crap. Free to play didn’t kill individual MMO titles, but it does seem like it’s been the death of the genre.

WarsydeFebruary 28, 2017 / 2:55 pm

Wait, I lied. I check out Elder Scrolls Online sometimes, and that was a 2014 release.